Gun Safety Group Sees Room to Reinforce Existing Laws

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The Roseburg Gun Shop in Roseburg, Ore., the town where a gunman killed nine people and wounded nine others at a community college last week.CreditCreditCengiz Yar Jr./Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

On Monday, a group whose goal is to prevent gun violence will release a report urging the administration to issue a series of regulations that would clarify existing laws in an effort to reduce gun-related crimes.

The group, Everytown for Gun Safety, writes that Mr. Obama could help protect potential gun victims from attackers, especially in cases of domestic abuse, by encouraging five relatively small changes to the way the federal and state governments interpret laws that are already on the books.

“The White House can take steps today to keep dangerous people with guns out of our schools, to keep convicted domestic abusers from possessing guns, to crack down on trafficking and to help federal law enforcement and states enforce the laws on the books that keep criminals from getting guns,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety.

Mr. Feinblatt reiterated Mr. Obama’s call for Congress to enact tougher laws. But he said the administration could carry out his group’s recommendations without action in the gridlocked Congress.

The group says the Justice Department should make it clear to law enforcement agencies that federal laws prohibiting gun purchases by anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic abuse also apply in cases where an abuser is not married to the victim. Current law bans gun purchases by those convicted of abuse if the victim is “similarly situated to a spouse,” but those running background checks often do not understand what that means, the group says in the report.

At a news conference on Friday, Mr. Obama said he had asked his staff: “Are there additional actions that we can take that might prevent even a handful of these tragic deaths from taking place?”

White House aides noted Sunday that the president had taken 23 executive actions on gun violence after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. And they said he was willing to consider other steps as well.

In focusing on firearms dealers, the authors of the report urge the administration to help states track background checks between unlicensed gun sellers and their buyers.

The group says federal law enforcement agencies should notify local and state authorities when someone fails a background check because he or she is a felon or a convicted domestic abuser; the group says local authorities should be alerted when such a person tries — and fails — to buy a gun.

The federal government should also clarify the Gun-Free School Zones Act, which prohibits the possession of a gun within 1,000 feet of a school, the group writes. It was signed into law by President George Bush in 1990.

That law exempts people who have a “qualified” state permit to carry a gun. But the group says it is not clear what kind of permit qualifies for an exemption. In some states, a permit-holder does not need to pass a background check, a loophole that should be closed, it says.

The group, which joined with a gun control organization founded by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City and another group formed in the wake of the school shootings in Newtown, claims more than three million supporters.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Safety Group Sees Room to Reinforce Gun Laws. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe